


Last Night I Watched You Sleeping, Once More The Nightmare Came

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Revenge (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 16:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21274232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: For spook_me, and for 100fandoms prompt 80: ghost. Emily has a nightmare about Amanda's ghost seeking revenge; the real Amanda's ghost is watching over her.





	Last Night I Watched You Sleeping, Once More The Nightmare Came

Emily knows she should be happy now. She’s married to Jack, her childhood sweetheart; she has a proper sisterly relationship with Charlotte at last; David Clarke’s name has been cleared; and Victoria Grayson is gone, no longer a threat. She can now live her life with Jack, the life she had dreamed of as a kid, and yet for some reason she feels unsettled.

Jack can never really understand. With the exception of those few moments of madness right after Declan died, he’s never really understood that all-consuming desire for revenge that has been her entire life for so many years. Nolan understands it better, but he’s not here now, isn’t with Emily on a day to day basis for her to be able to talk it through with. Emily goes through her days, helping take care of Carl, acting like everything’s fine, yet she can’t shake the feeling at the back of her mind, the feeling that one day her revenge plans from back then are still going to come back and bite her. Maybe that was what the nightmare about having been given Victoria’s heart was all about; maybe she felt that Victoria would never truly become consigned to the past.

And she often thinks of those who had paid the price for her plans for revenge; Ben Hunter, Daniel Grayson, Aiden Mathis, and the real Emily Thorne, only ever wanting to belong to a family.

As she’s thinking of her, Emily imagines she sees a glimpse of Amanda, standing at the edge of the boat, looking at her straight on. Then she looks again, and the figure is gone, and she decides she must have imagined it. Amanda’s not here; Emily will force it from her mind.

“You took it all from me.”

Emily whirls around to see her former best friend standing before her.

“You took my name, my identity from me.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Emily starts, remembering their long conversations in juvie, when Amanda had talked about how she felt no ties to her family, to the name Emily Thorne, how even being Amanda Clarke, the daughter of a notorious murderer, was better than being the daughter of two drunks who had never cared enough for her to stop themselves from driving wasted and crashing straight into a tree.

“And my family. Did you always intend to raise Carl as your own, back when you were lying to me about his paternity? And were you always planning to steal Jack from me, even back when you were supposedly engaged to Daniel?”

“Amanda…” Emily pleads, but Amanda takes a step forward, reaches out as if to push her over the side…..

Amanda had watched Emily wake in the night, realising she was still in her bed on the boat with Jack beside her, seen Jack comfort her, tell her it was all a bad dream just as the time she was convinced she had Victoria Grayson’s heart had been. She wishes Emily could see her now, the real her rather than the form of her who had said such things in her nightmare, so she could tell her that everything was okay.

She wishes she could tell Emily that she’s happy that Emily is taking care of Carl, that if Amanda had had a chance to make a will she would have named Emily guardian anyway. She knows that Emily will give Carl the family Amanda always wanted for him, the family that neither Emily nor Amanda had had themselves for large parts of their childhood.

This is where Emily belongs, the place where Amanda had always on some level felt like an impostor; waiting every moment for the ball to drop, for a time when she would make a mistake with Jack over a childhood memory Emily would have known, but never mentioned to Amanda. Hell, Emily could have even exposed their identity swap any time she chose, and yet she never had while Amanda was alive.

And Emily belongs with Charlotte; Amanda had picked up the fact at the time that it bothered Emily to see her and Charlotte acting as sisters, knowing all the time that she was Charlotte’s real sister and not Amanda. At the time, still pissed off with Emily over the whole thing with her having allowed her to believe Jack wasn’t Carl’s father, Amanda had enjoyed that. But now she’s happy that the two have found each other at last; although Amanda hopes that every once in a while, Charlotte still thinks of the other sister she had had, still remembers her with a smile.

Although they had had their moments, Emily had come through for Amanda, giving her the chance at a family that she had long since given up on. Now Amanda will watch over Emily, knowing that she’s finally got her happy ending.


End file.
